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Policy Framework
Large, comprehensive high schools in urban areas are often troubled environments for teaching and learning. Research strongly indicates that, in such schools, ninth grade is a year in which many students start on the path to low achievement and dropping out. Leaving the more protected environment of middle school, many ninth-graders feel lost and anonymous, unsupported by their teachers and unengaged in their studies.
Project Transition was a research and demonstration program developed and evaluated by MDRC and implemented during the mid-1990s at two urban schools. The demonstration was designed to test the effectiveness of a set of changes in school structure and supports that were intended to improve students’ experiences during the critical ninth-grade year. These changes included: the establishment of student-teacher teams of four core academic teachers (for math, English, science, and social studies) and approximately 120 students who shared many of their core classes; daily teacher team meetings for collaboration on professional development and on solutions to student problems; and coaching and other supports to aid teachers’ professional development and improve their instructional practice. These reforms, it was hoped, would alter teacher-student dynamics, strengthen relationships among students, lead to improvements in the learning environment and classroom instruction in ways that would help students make a successful transition from middle school to high school, and ultimately improve student attendance and performance. A final report on the project was completed in 1999.
Agenda, Scope, and Goals
The evaluation addressed two major questions:
- How was Project Transition implemented in the target schools?
- What were the program’s impacts on students’ attitudes, attendance, and academic achievement?
Design, Sites, and Data Sources
Project Transition’s impacts were estimated using a cohort comparison design. (Each entering ninth-grade class is referred to as a cohort). The study compared outcomes for cohorts that experienced Project Transition with outcomes for a cohort of ninth graders in the same schools prior to the project’s implementation. The differences in outcomes between the pre-Project Transition and Project Transition groups represent the program’s impacts.
Project Transition was field-tested in two large urban high schools, one located in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and the other in Kansas City, Kansas.
Data sources used to assess implementation included observations, interviews, and focus groups conducted at the two schools by MDRC researchers. To estimate the project’s effects on students, data were obtained from a survey administered to each group of students during the spring semester of their ninth-grade year and from school records data maintained by the Milwaukee and Kansas City, Kansas, public school systems.
Findings
According to the final report, Project Transition was found to have provided a more supportive environment for both students and teachers. It also produced positive but modest effects on student achievement in the school where it was more fully implemented.
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